Knucklebones
by Chibi Lurrel
Summary: An exercise in non-linearity. For the prompt "Arthur loses his totem." Arthur/Eames, with appearances from the whole team. One-shot, for real.


**Knucklebones**

_For this prompt on inception_kink: Arthur loses his totem._

xxx

Arthur only hears the door creak open and then the explosion of guns. The backup, he assumes, is dead.

He can't help the yowl that escapes him when the blindfold is yanked off by Eames' rough hands and light floods into his blown pupils.

Someone cuts his ropes and Eames crushes him to his broad chest and Arthur is shaking.

"Arthur, Arthur, Arthur," Eames is chanting a litany, his hands rolled up in Arthur's greasy hair. Their mouths meet briefly and Arthur wants, a deep, desperate need, for this to be Eames, for Eames to be there, touching him. He doesn't know but right then he doesn't want to know, he can't have this taken away too.

Arthur breaths him in, and tries to believe he exists. "Please," is all he manages to say, mouth tasting of blood and dust.

Eames, to his credit, slips a die into Arthur's hand without a word.

xxx

There's a video labeled "" sitting in Eames' inbox from an e-mail address he doesn't recognize. He is sitting on the couch in Arthur's flat, but he doesn't know where Arthur is. It's been 16 hours. The email promises to let him know, but doesn't say much else, and he is curious enough to click it open.

The angle is poor, but the video quality is absurdly high. Arthur is stretched, tied tightly to at a chair, stripped to his boxer briefs and covered in rough rope that has already started reddening the pale skin underneath. The resolution is high enough that Eames can see the goosebumps on his arms and the grimace on his blindfolded face.

A voice floats over the footage. "So, we have him."

Eames hands curl into fists.

"Plug him in," the voice says, and Arthur is hooked into a PASIV device by an obscured shadow.

"We're going to take him deep, Eames. Deeper than ever before, than you've ever been. And then we're going to make him bleed. He's going to scream for you, Eames. I bet he's going to cry real pretty."

There is a pause as Arthur's body stops struggling against the drugs and goes limp.

"Unless, of course, you bring us your Architect."

The video ends.

xxx

Arthur's heart falls through his ribs.

The man who stands next to him laughs and Arthur tries to _will_himself to death, to mentally kick himself back into bed with Eames' warm bulk next to him.

It doesn't work.

He's stuck here, he could be stuck here forever.

He dies again only to wake up, back in the room, back in the chair. Back in the dark.

xxx

Eames calls Yusuf, because Yusuf always answers. He is reliable, and owes him, and has never let him down. Eames allows himself a brief moment of hope when Yusuf answers immediately, even though it is approximately 3 am in Dubai.

"Eames," Yusuf says, hazily. "What's wrong?"

"It's Fischer," Eames blurts and then realizes it doesn't matter if his phone is bugged. This move is so predictable that he isn't showing his hand. "He wants Ariad—our Architect."

He can picture Yusuf's worried mouth in his mind, the scrub of hand over face, and then hears a loud exhalation. "So we hide her."

"They have Arthur." Eames is aware that he sounds desperate already and knows that's what Fischer wants. Desperation means mistakes.

Eames can't stop the fear from sticking to his ribs.

Yusuf is thinking, so Eames doesn't push. "Where are you?" he asks eventually, and Eames knows he's reached a similar conclusion – the phones aren't safe.

"We can meet in the safehouse," says Eames, and then he hangs up.

He gets on a plane.

xxx

Fischer has abandoned Arthur to sit on the floor in front of the laptop in the room that Arthur can't see. He can hear Eames, and Yusuf, and Ariadne, and hates them, hates Eames especially. He sits tied to that fucking chair and seethes with how much he hates Eames for bringing Ariadne into this, for doing what Fischer wants. He wonders if they exist or if it's an elaborate illusion.

"We've got her, Fischer. Now let him go." Eames is holding a gun against Ariadne's head, and she's struggling. Arthur can hear her defiant grunt, can picture the dwarfing of her arms in Eames' hands.

Fischer laughs. "Aaah. There she is! At last – my dream girl." He lets out of a soft sigh and rests his head on his hands.

Arthur wants to scream. It can't be real.

xxx

Eames and Yusuf reconnect in Mombassa. No one has contacted Ariadne yet. In fact, Eames is afraid to contact Cobb. He is afraid to bring Cobb, recently rescued Cobb, into this, but he is more afraid of what Cobb would do if he learned it was Eames who could have stopped this.

"So," Yusuf says.

"So." Eames' eyes are bloodshot, red-rimmed with worry. He's torn the labels off two bottles of beer already.

"We fake her death," says Yusuf. "We give her a whole new identity. We send the video to Fischer."

Eames nods. "We should call Saito."

Yusuf nods. "It would be prudent, yes. Have you traced the emails?"

"It's not my specialty, but I tried. I think you might have better luck."

"But you know it's Fischer." A nod.

Eames pulls his laptop out and shoves it at Yusuf, who begins to work.

xxx

"If it was so easy to get _me_," Arthur sneers, "why not just take her directly?" They are in the room, the same room he has now woken up in seven times in a row. Each death takes more and more bullets.

Fischer laughs. Arthur wonders if he has been here so long that this is what his limbo has become, an endless loop of waking up in Fischer's clutches. He'd like to make a building, or put a brick through Fischer's skull, but he's so so tired. He wants to see.

"You and Cobb…you were easy to find. Easier, that is. Eames and your chemist, well, they have history You've all been doing this a long time, Arthur. But her...it was like she existed just to torment me, and then disappeared into nothingness when she was done."

Fischer sighs, and looks at Arthur, who of course sees nothing. "She's the girl of my dreams, you know," he says, and then, "Let's make another video."

Arthur doesn't know if he's dying or waking. His fingers spasm in a hopeless motion.

xxx

The next one is labeled simply "" and it is short. Arthur's tied to the familiar chair. The videos are coming every three hours, but sometimes they are simply out of focus shots of Arthur waking up terrified.

In , a hand is holding a phone near Arthur. Cobb's tinny voice fills the space. "Arthur? Arthur? Are you okay? Who is this?" Those watching have obviously missed the introductions.

Arthur's voice sounds like sandpaper moving against the grain of wood. "I'm fine, Cobb. Don't worry."

"He's lying," is all Fischer says before he shuts down the call. "And liars get punished."

A syringe appears on the screen and Arthur's body struggles uselessly.

The screen goes dark.

xxx

Arthur cannot stop trying to logic his way into what is real and what isn't. The closest thing he knows of reality, if there is indeed a top layer, now comes in quick bursts and nightmares of Robert Fischer shoving a video camera in his face. Sometimes he is forced to speak to people who he has been trying to forget. Eames, Cobb, Ariadne, Yusuf. Saito even gets his own message. Those people shouldn't be real to him anymore, because he will never see them again.

Sometimes Fischer – and Arthur didn't need to see him to know him – kills him while shooting video and that makes even his torture treacherous and unknowable. He mostly wakes up to darkness, trapped and tied with the same soft buzz of a camera and the same sharp voice. Each time the gun is cocked brings him closer and closer to either the real death or limbo.

Sometimes he wakes up in his own bed. This is what disturbs him the most. Here, he can see and is unfettered by rooms - he could even go outside (but he doesn't). No one is ever in the flat with him, and he doesn't leave the bed until the third time he appears there. The flat is impeccably decorated, but it is devoid of all things Eames. There is no coat thrown over the couch, no shuffle of newspapers on the table.

The dishwasher is empty.

He wants to think the reason Eames is missing is because it isn't real; Eames once said to him Never forge a forger. It's too difficult – the most skilled know how to hide their tics, keep their gait unsteady. The immutable lack of Eames is the only thing that keeps Arthur from clinging to this reality like a lifeline, to making it his own personal home and to reject everything else. But it's harder, each time, to believe that his soft comforter is false, that the pain is what is real.

xxx

Eames' inbox has another video sitting placidly in his browser. It is titled "." Eames almost breaks the laptop in fury, and then refuses to watch it alone. Yusuf is forced to sit next to him and hit play. Eames sits perfectly still the entire time the video plays.

Arthur's face is pale and sweaty and the blindfold is still on as he is shoved closer to the camera. His hands are tied behind his back, and his nose and upper lip are crusted in dried blood. Yusuf hears Fischer's voice. "Knees."

Arthur drops to the concrete floor. His head whips left and right, as though he is trying to case the nondescript little cell he is trapped in. The camera is pushed too close to his face, making him slightly out of focus.

A gun is cocked. "Where do you think you are?"

Arthur's voice is thick and hoarse. "Go fuck yourself." Yusuf can see into Arthur's mouth and he's bitten the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw blood.

"I'm sending your Eames a little present."

Arthur, to his credit, doesn't flinch. "I don't know why you're bothering," he grunts, then spits blood and phlegm onto the ground.

"Aren't you the little hellion?" A gun is pressed up against Arthur's temple.

"Pain is in the mind," he says in reply, and Yusuf wonders how many times he's said it since being captured. Eames' eyes flutter shut.

Fischer, off camera, laughs. "What do you have to say to Eames, my pet?"

Arthur's face comes into focus – he would be staring straight into the camera if his eyes were visible. "Don't. Please, just don't." His voice sounds the same; no cracking or tremble, just numb resignation.

More laughter, and then a noise Yusuf can't place. The camera pans away from Arthur to something that has landed by his knees.

It's a die. "Any guesses as to what number's up, Arthur?" The video cuts out.

Yusuf doesn't get sick, but he wants to be, wants to be able to purge whatever lived in Robert Fischer's voice from his ears.

Eames doesn't move for a long, long time.

xxx

Arthur can't tell when the dream started. Was it that morning, waking up in bed alone? Was it the plane? Was it this cold concrete room that he was dumped in, pain dragging him back from a black and mysterious waiting?

He doesn't want this to be real, but he knows better than to start hoping for anything. Fischer smiles at him as goons dump him into a small place and disappear.

"We're alone now, Mr. Arthur." Fischer says, one hand holding a video camera. There is a chair behind Arthur, and he sees the PASIV device. "Well, you're alone now." His face is distorted in a grin, and it is those white teeth that stay with Arthur behind the blindfold.

xxx

Eames calls Saito.

"Hello, old friend," and just the mahogany lilt of Saito's voice is soothing to Eames.

"I…we need your help," Eames says as steadily as he can muster. He is calling from a pay as you go in Tanzania. He'd crossed country lines to avoid being tracked, which was probably over cautious. But Eames has learned too cautious is often not cautious enough. He looks over his shoulder every ten seconds and never stops moving.

"What is it you need?"

"I. I need documents verified. I need something traced. I need to find Robert Fischer."

"Sounds to me like you need a point man."

The heaviness of that statement, it's deliberateness, isn't lost on Eames, even through the terrible reception. "I need to find him first. I think we've traced him to Australia, but I don't know where. And we need Ariadne. And a plane to Australia."

There is a pause, and Eames hates that he can't fix this himself.

"It will be done."

xxx

Or thinks he will head to Mombassa. Instead, the whole fucking plane gets hijacked. Whoever this was, he was good. He was rich as fuck. Arthur wants desperately to shot the window out of the plane and kill everyone in it, he wants to wake up, he wants this to not be real.

But he doesn't know. He has no way to know anything. There is no die in his pocket, there is no Cobb, and there is no Eames.

So he lets himself be taken hostage rather than let a whole plane of people be killed by four men in ski masks. Arthur hates how non-descript his attackers have been – it makes him suspicious. What reality can he trust in now?

"Is this the real world?" he asks as his hands are ziptied behind his back. First class has been moved back and is all theirs. The plastic is pulled too tight, and Arthur has to carefully not roll his eyes. It's always too tight.

One of the masked men laughs. "It doesn't matter now, kid."

Arthur feels the needle hit his neck and prays that Eames is safe before he falls into a dream.

xxx

Ariadne meets them in a hotel in Sydney. Fischer's emails are not too difficult for Saito's people to track (and they would have been simple for Arthur as well, Eames thinks), and he is nearby, a safehouse outside the city limits.

"A shithole, basically," Saito's man says bluntly on the phone.

Ariadne looks worried and young. "What's going on?" she asks, because she has the luxury of seeing Eames and Yusuf and thinking safe.

"Arthur's in danger," Yusuf starts. "So we need you to die."

Eames rolls his eyes. "We need to fake your death."

"Fischer wants you, and he's trying to get Arthur, or Eames, to give you up."

Ariadne bites her lip. "You won't though." It's not a question.

Eames pulls her into a hug. "Of course not."

"And Arthur's going to be okay."

Yusuf is nodding next to them. "Of course he is."

xxx

Arthur travels light. He's in a suit, but he's got a bag with jeans, a sweatshirt, a t-shirt, and baseball cap in it. Disguises. He's got his Glock, his ammo, his phone, and some protein bars, three passports.

His bank account gets emptied. He has several that he knows will be watched, if they had his address. He has a few that won't be.

Cash in hand, Arthur heads to Mombassa.

xxx

The next one is labeled simply "" and it is short. Arthur's tied to the familiar chair, in the same room. The videos are coming every three hours, but sometimes they are simply out of focused shots of Arthur waking up terrified.

In , a hand is holding a phone near Arthur. Cobb's tinny voice fills the space. "Arthur? Arthur? Are you okay? Who is this?"

Arthur's voice sounds like sandpaper moving against the grain of wood. "I'm fine, Cobb. Don't worry."

"He's lying," is all Fischer says before he shuts down the call. "And liars get punished."

A syringe appears on the screen and Arthur's body struggles uselessly until the screen goes black.

xxx

There are three of them.

Arthur breaks a man's neck before a person lays a hand on him, the sheets tangling in his legs.

One of the other goons pulls a gun but the third hisses "Unharmed, he's to be unharmed," and Arthur wishes this meant he could believe it was reality. He grabs his own gun and shoots one and wants to know if it was the real death he just inflicted. Then it is just him and a man with a gun pointing at his head. Arthur laughs, adrenaline pounding in his temples and behind his eyes.

"Who the fuck sent you?" Arthur demands. He's still in the bed.

The other man grins. "We got Eames."

Arthur merely blinks, the tremor of fear entirely internalized. "And? Good luck with that former colleague of mine."

The man's grin falters, but he moves on. "We ain't the most gracious hosts. Maybe if you told us what we needed, he'd go free."

"And what is it that you need?"

He grins again, ugly. "Your Architect."

Arthur shoots him in the head and runs.

xxx

The next is titled "."

"Eames, don't," whispers Ariadne, but he opens the file with trembling fingers. Eames won't be afraid to look Arthur in the eye when this is all over, so he must.

Arthur is in the same chair, only it has been shifted, his body angled so his legs sit higher than his head, which rests near the floor. A towel covers the lower half of his face and Fischer's body, but not face, are in the screen, looming over him with a bucket.

Arthur is drowning. Eames has seen it before, in a dream, but on the laptop screen it is almost too much. Arthur's limbs go rigid and he makes wet animal noises. Fischer lets up for a few seconds.

"So where is she?"

Arthur wheezes. "Pain is in the mind."

The video ends.

xxx

Arthur sits in bed, shirtless and unsure. Eames isn't next to him, so it could be a dream. Or, Eames could still be outside the bedroom, walking around his flat, spilling tea on his carpet and shuffling papers to cover the stains.

Arthur has woken up and grabbed his totem every single morning for the past 9 years.

Arthur has no idea what to do. He doesn't bother scrambling on the floor to look for it, doesn't bother moving. That's not how this works.

He stays still, and that's when the door bursts open.

xxx

Eames hits "connect," though Fischer has no way of knowing they are a mere fifty yards from the shack that that cages Arthur in. It works.

Eames freezes when he hears the word dream girl – he doesn't know what to do with this knowledge, that it wasn't revenge but something else entirely Fischer wants, but Ariadne jumps in feet first. "Fine, we'll do a trade."

"It's time for plan b," she says after they have disconnected, and opens up her suitcase. It's filled with guns.

xxx

Arthur wakes up suddenly, with a gasp. Arthur has never been a good sleeper, and is even worse at waking – he always comes to consciousness confused and disoriented in the morning, and this time he wakes up without Eames.

He reaches to grab his totem, and hits air.

"Shit," he says, and the word echoes around him, disappearing into the space of unknown.


End file.
